Part 2

Chapter 2

THE room remained shut up and the shutters had
allowed gradual streaks of daylight to form a fan
on the ceiling. The confined air stupefied them
so that they continued their night's slumber:
Lénore and Henri in each other's arms,
Alzire with her head back, lying on her hump;
while Father Bonnemort, having the bed of Zacharie
and Jeanlin to himself, snored with open mouth.
No sound came from the closet where Maheude had
gone to sleep again while suckling Estelle, her
breast hanging to one side, the child lying across
her belly, stuffed with milk, overcome also and
stifling in the soft flesh of the bosom.

The clock below struck six. Along the front of
the settlement one heard the sound of doors, then
the clatter of sabots along the pavements; the
screening women were going to the pit. And
silence again fell until seven o'clock. Then
shutters were drawn back, yawns and coughs were
heard through the walls. For a long time a
coffee-mill scraped, but no one awoke in the room.

Suddenly a sound of blows and shouts, far away,
made Alzire sit up. She was conscious of the
time, and ran barefooted to shake her mother.

"Mother, mother, it is late! you have to go
out. Take care, you are crushing Estelle."

And she saved the child, half-stifled beneath the
enormous mass of the breasts.

"Good gracious!" stammered Maheude,
rubbing her eyes, "I'm so knocked up I could
sleep all day. Dress Lénore and Henri,
I'll take them with me; and you can take care of
Estelle; I don't want to drag her along for fear
of hurting her, this dog's weather."

She hastily washed herself and put on an old blue
skirt, her cleanest, and a loose jacket of grey
wool in which she had made two patches the evening
before.

"And the soup! Good gracious!" she
muttered again.

When her mother had gone down, upsetting
everything, Alzire went back into the room taking
with her Estelle, who had begun screaming. But
she was used to the little one's rages; at eight
she had all a woman's tender cunning in soothing
and amusing her. She gently placed her in her
still warm bed, and put her to sleep again, giving
her a finger to suck. It was time, for now
another disturbance broke out, and she had to make
peace between Lénore and Henri, who at last
awoke. These children could never get on
together; it was only when they were asleep that
they put their arms round one another's necks.
The girl, who was six years old, as soon as she
was awake set on the boy, her junior by two years,
who received her blows without returning them.
Both of them had the same kind of head, which was
too large for them, as if blown out, with
disorderly yellow hair. Alzire had to pull her
sister by the legs, threatening to take the skin
off her bottom. Then there was stamping over the
washing, and over every garment that she put on to
them. The shutters remained closed so as not to
disturb Father Bonnemort's sleep. He went on
snoring amid the children's frightful clatter.

"It's ready. Are you coming, up there?"
shouted Maheude.

She had put back the blinds, and stirred up the
fire, adding some coal to it. Her hope was that
the old man had not swallowed all the soup. But
she found the saucepan dry, and cooked a handful
of vermicelli which she had been keeping for three
days in reserve. They could swallow it with
water, without butter, as there could not be any
remaining from the day before, and she was
surprised to find that Catherine in preparing the
briquets had performed the miracle of leaving a
piece as large as a nut. But this time the
cupboard was indeed empty: nothing, not a crust,
not an odd fragment, not a bone to gnaw. What was
to become of them if Maigrat persisted in cutting
short their credit, and if the Piolaine people
would not give them the five francs? When the men
and the girl returned from the pit they would want
to eat, for unfortunately it had not yet been
found out how to live without eating.

"Come down, will you?" she cried out,
getting angry. "I ought to be gone by
this!"

When Alzire and the children were there she
divided the vermicelli in three small portions.
She herself was not hungry, she said. Although
Catherine had already poured water on the
coffee-dregs of the day before, she did so over
again, and swallowed two large glasses of coffee
so weak that it looked like rusty water. That
would keep her up all the same.

"Listen!" she repeated to Alzire.
"You must let your grandfather sleep; you
must watch that Estelle does not knock her head;
and if she wakes, or if she howls too much, here!
take this bit of sugar and melt it and give it her
in spoonfuls. I know that you are sensible and
won't eat it yourself."

"And school, mother?"

"School! well, that must be left for another
day: I want you."

"And the soup? would you like me to make it
if you come back late?"

"Soup, soup: no, wait till I come."

Alzire, with the precocious intelligence of a
little invalid girl, could make soup very well.
She must have understood, for she did not insist.
Now the whole settlement was awake, bands of
children were going to school, and one heard the
trailing noise of their clogs. Eight o'clock
struck, and a growing murmur of chatter arose on
the left, among the Levaque people. The women
were commencing their day around the coffee-pots,
with their fists on their hips, their tongues
turning without ceasing, like millstones. A faded
head, with thick lips and flattened nose, was
pressed against a window-pane, calling out:

"Got some news. Stop a bit."

"No, no! later on," replied Maheude.
"I have to go out."

And for fear of giving way to the offer of a glass
of hot coffee she pushed Lénore and Henri,
and set out with them. Up above, Father Bonnemort
was still snoring with a rhythmic snore which
rocked the house.

Outside, Maheude was surprised to find that the
wind was no longer blowing. There had been a
sudden thaw; the sky was earth-coloured, the walls
were sticky with greenish moisture, and the roads
were covered with pitch-like mud, a special kind
of mud peculiar to the coal country, as black as
diluted soot, thick and tenacious enough to pull
off her sabots. Suddenly she boxed
Lénore's ears, because the little one
amused herself by piling the mud on her clogs as
on the end of a shovel. On leaving the settlement
she had gone along by the pit-bank and followed
the road of the canal, making a short cut through
broken-up paths, across rough country shut in by
mossy palings. Sheds succeeded one another, long
workshop buildings, tall chimneys spitting out
soot, and soiling this ravaged suburb of an
industrial district. Behind a clump of poplars
the old Réquillart pit exhibited its
crumbling steeple, of which the large skeleton
alone stood upright. And turning to the right,
Maheude found herself on the high road.

"Stop, stop, dirty pig! I'll teach you to
make rissoles." Now it was Henri, who had
taken a handful of mud and was moulding it. The
two children had their ears impartially boxed, and
resumed their orderly progress, squinting down at
the tracks they were making in the mud-heaps.
They draggled along, already exhausted by their
efforts to unstick their shoes at every step.

On the Marchiennes side the road unrolled its two
leagues of pavement, which stretched straight as a
ribbon soaked in cart grease between the reddish
fields. But on the other side it went winding
down through Montsou, which was built on the slope
of a large undulation in the plain. These roads
in the Nord, drawn like a string between
manufacturing towns, with their slight curves,
their slow ascents, gradually get lined with
houses and tend to make the department one
laborious city. The little brick houses, daubed
over to enliven the climate, some yellow, others
blue, others black--the last, no doubt, in order
to reach at once their final shade--went
serpentining down to right and to left to the
bottom of the slope. A few large two-storied
villas, the dwellings of the heads of the
workshops, made gaps in the serried line of narrow
facades. A church, also of brick, looked like a
new model of a large furnace, with its square
tower already stained by the floating coal dust.
And amid the sugar works, the rope works, and the
flour mills, there stood out ballrooms,
restaurants, and beer-shops, which were so
numerous that to every thousand houses there were
more than five hundred inns.

As she approached the Company's Yards, a vast
series of storehouses and workshops, Maheude
decided to take Henri and Lénore by the
hand, one on the right, the other on the left.
Beyond was situated the house of the director, M.
Hennebeau, a sort of vast chalet, separated from
the road by a grating, and then a garden in which
some lean trees vegetated. Just then, a carriage
had stopped before the door and a gentleman with
decorations and a lady in a fur cloak alighted:
visitors just arrived from Paris at the
Marchiennes station, for Madame Hennebeau, who
appeared in the shadow of the porch, was uttering
exclamations of surprise and joy.

"Come along, then, dawdlers!" growled
Maheude, pulling the two little ones, who were
standing in the mud.

When she arrived at Maigrat's, she was quite
excited. Maigrat lived close to the manager; only
a wall separated the latter's ground from his own
small house, and he had there a warehouse, a long
building which opened on to the road as a shop
without a front. He kept everything there,
grocery, cooked meats, fruit, and sold bread,
beer, and saucepans. Formerly an overseer at the
Voreux, he had started with a small canteen; then,
thanks to the protection of his superiors, his
business had enlarged, gradually killing the
Montsou retail trade. He centralized merchandise,
and the considerable custom of the settlements
enabled him to sell more cheaply and to give
longer credit. Besides, he had remained in the
Company's hands, and they had built his small
house and his shop.

"Here I am again, Monsieur Maigrat,"
said Maheude humbly, finding him standing in front
of his door.

He looked at her without replying. He was a
stout, cold, polite man, and he prided himself on
never changing his mind.

"Now you won't send me away again, like
yesterday. We must have bread from now to
Saturday. Sure enough, we owe you sixty francs
these two years."

She explained in short, painful phrases. It was
an old debt contracted during the last strike.
Twenty times over they had promised to settle it,
but they had not been able; they could not even
give him forty sous a fortnight. And then a
misfortune had happened two days before; she had
been obliged to pay twenty francs to a shoemaker
who threatened to seize their things. And that
was why they were without a sou. Otherwise they
would have been able to go on until Saturday, like
the others.

Maigrat, with protruded belly and folded arms,
shook his head at every supplication.

"Only two loaves, Monsieur Maigrat. I am
reasonable, I don't ask for coffee. Only two
three-pound loaves a day."

"No," he shouted at last, at the top of
his voice.

His wife had appeared, a pitiful creature who
passed all her days over a ledger, without even
daring to lift her head. She moved away,
frightened at seeing this unfortunate woman
turning her ardent, beseeching eyes towards her.
It was said that she yielded the conjugal bed to
the putters among the customers. It was a known
fact that when a miner wished to prolong his
credit, he had only to send his daughter or his
wife, plain or pretty, it mattered not, provided
they were complaisant.

Maheude, still imploring Maigrat with her look,
felt herself uncomfortable under the pale keenness
of his small eyes, which seemed to undress her.
It made her angry; she would have understood
before she had had seven children, when she was
young. And she went off, violently dragging
Lénore and Henri who were occupied in
picking up nut-shells from the gutter and
examining them.

"This won't bring you luck, Monsieur Maigrat,
remember!"

Now there only remained the Piolaine people. If
these would not throw her a five-franc piece she
might as well lie down and die. She had taken the
Joiselle road on the left. The administration
building was there at the corner of the road, a
veritable brick palace, where the great people
from Paris, princes and generals and members of
the Government, came every autumn to give large
dinners. As she walked she was already spending
the five francs, first bread, then coffee,
afterwards a quarter of butter, a bushel of
potatoes for the morning soup and the evening
stew; finally, perhaps, a bit of brawn, for the
father needed meat.

The curé of Montsou, Abbé Joire, was
passing, holding up his cassock, with the delicate
air of a fat, well-nourished cat afraid of wetting
its fur. He was a mild man who pretended not to
interest himself in anything, so as not to vex
either the workers or the masters.

"Good day, monsieur le curé."

Without stopping he smiled at the children, and
left her planted in the middle of the road. She
was not religious, but she had suddenly imagined
that this priest would give her something.

And the journey began again through the black,
sticky mud. There were still two kilometres to
walk, and the little ones dragged behind more than
ever, for they were frightened, and no longer
amused themselves. To right and to left of the
path the same vague landscape unrolled, enclosed
within mossy palings, the same factory buildings,
dirty with smoke, bristling with tall chimneys.
Then the flat land was spread out in immense open
fields, like an ocean of brown clods, without a
tree-trunk, as far as the purplish line of the
forest of Vandame.

"Carry me, mother."

She carried them one after the other. Puddles
made holes in the pathway, and she pulled up her
clothes, fearful of arriving too dirty. Three
times she nearly fell, so sticky was that
confounded pavement. And as they at last arrived
before the porch, two enormous dogs threw
themselves upon them, barking so loudly that the
little ones yelled with terror. The coachman was
obliged to take a whip to them.

"Leave your sabots, and come in,"
repeated Honorine. In the dining-room the mother
and children stood motionless, dazed by the sudden
heat, and very constrained beneath the gaze of
this old lady and gentleman, who were stretched
out in their easy-chairs.

"Cécile," said the old lady,
"fulfil your little duties."

The Grégoires charged Cécile with
their charities. It was part of their idea of a
good education. One must be charitable. They
said themselves that their house was the house of
God. Besides, they flattered themselves that they
performed their charity with intelligence, and
they were exercised by a constant fear lest they
should be deceived, and so encourage vice. So
they never gave money, never! Not ten sous, not
two sous, for it is a well-known fact that as soon
as a poor man gets two sous he drinks them. Their
alms were, therefore, always in kind, especially
in warm clothing, distributed during the winter to
needy children.

"Oh! the poor dears!" exclaimed
Cécile, '"how pale they are from the
cold! Honorine, go and look for the parcel in the
cupboard."

The servants were also gazing at these miserable
creatures with the pity and vague uneasiness of
girls who are in no difficulty about their own
dinners. While the housemaid went upstairs, the
cook forgot her duties, leaving the rest of the
brioche on the table, and stood there swinging her
empty hands.

"I still have two woollen dresses and some
comforters," Cécile went on; "you
will see how warm they will be, the poor
dears!"

Then Maheude found her tongue, and stammered:

"Thank you so much, mademoiselle. You are
all too good."

Tears had filled her eyes, she thought herself
sure of the five francs, and was only preoccupied
by the way in which she would ask for them if they
were not offered to her. The housemaid did not
reappear, and there was a moment of embarrassed
silence. From their mother's skirts the little
ones opened their eyes wide and gazed at the
brioche.

"You only have these two?" asked Madame
Grégoire, in order to break the silence.

"Oh, madame! I have seven. "

M. Grégoire, who had gone back to his
newspaper. sat up indignantly.

"Seven children! But why? good God!"

"It is imprudent," murmured the old
lady.

Maheude made a vague gesture of apology. What
would you have? One doesn't think about it at
all, they come quite naturally. And then, when
they grow up they bring something in, and that
makes the household go. Take their case, they
could get on, if it was not for the grandfather
who was getting quite stiff, and if it was not
that among the lot only two of her sons and her
eldest daughter were old enough to go down into
the pit. It was necessary, all the same, to feed
the little ones who brought nothing in.

"Then," said Madame Grégoire,
"you have worked for a long time at the
mines?"

A silent laugh lit up Maheude's pale face.

"Ah, yes! ah, yes! I went down till I was
twenty. The doctor said that I should stay above
for good after I had been confined the second
time, because it seems that made something go
wrong in my inside. Besides, then I got married,
and I had enough to do in the house. But on my
husband's side, you see, they have been down there
for ages. It goes up from grandfather to
grandfather, one doesn't know how far back, quite
to the beginning when they first took the pick
down there at Réquillart."

M. Grégoire thoughtfully contemplated this
woman and these pitiful children, with their waxy
flesh, their discoloured hair, the degeneration
which stunted them, gnawed by anaemia, and with
the melancholy ugliness of starvelings. There was
silence again, and one only heard the burning coal
as it gave out a jet of gas. The moist room had
that heavy air of comfort in which our
middle-class nooks of happiness slumber.

"What is she doing, then?" exclaimed
Cécile impatiently. "Mélanie,
go up and tell her that the parcel is at the
bottom of the cupboard, on the left."

In the meanwhile, M. Grégoire repeated
aloud the reflections inspired by the sight of
these starving ones.

"There is evil in this world, it is quite
true; but, my good woman, it must also be said
that workpeople are never prudent. Thus, instead
of putting aside a few sous like our peasants,
miners drink, get into debt, and end by not having
enough to support their families."

"Monsieur is right," replied Maheude
sturdily. "They don't always keep to the
right path. That's what I'm always saying to the
ne'er-do-wells when they complain. Now, I have
been lucky; my husband doesn't drink. All the
same, on feast Sundays he sometimes takes a drop
too much; but it never goes farther. It is all
the nicer of him, since before our marriage he
drank like a hog, begging your pardon. And yet,
you know, it doesn't help us much that he is so
sensible. There are days like to-day when you
might turn out all the drawers in the house and
not find a farthing."

She wished to suggest to them the idea of the
five-franc piece, and went on in her low voice,
explaining the fatal debt, small at first, then
large and overwhelming. They paid regularly for
many fortnights. But one day they got behind, and
then it was all up. They could never catch up
again. The gulf widened, and the men became
disgusted with work which did not even allow them
to pay their way. Do what they could, there was
nothing but difficulties until death. Besides, it
must be understood that a collier needed a glass
to wash away the dust. It began there, and then
he was always in the inn when worries came.
Without complaining of any one it might be that
the workmen did not earn as much as they ought to.

"I thought," said Madame
Gérgoire, "that the Company gave you
lodging and firing?"

Maheude glanced sideways at the flaming coal in
the fire-place.

"Yes, yes, they give us coal, not very grand,
but it burns. As to lodging, it only costs six
francs a month; that sounds like nothing, but it
is often pretty hard to pay. To-day they might
cut me up into bits without getting two sous out
of me. Where there's nothing, there's
nothing."

The lady and gentleman were silent, softly
stretched out, and gradually wearied and
disquieted by the exhibition of this wretchedness.
She feared she had wounded them, and added, with
the stolid and just air of a practical woman:

"Oh! I didn't want to complain. Things are
like this, and one has to put up with them; all
the more that it's no good struggling, perhaps we
shouldn't change anything. The best is, is it
not, to try and live honestly in the place in
which the good God has put us?"

M. Grégoire approved this emphatically.

"With such sentiments, my good woman, one is
above misfortune."

Honorine and Mélanie at last brought the
parcel.

Cécile unfastened it and took out the two
dresses. She added comforters, even stockings and
mittens. They would all fit beautifully; she
hastened and made the servants wrap up the chosen
garments; for her music mistress had just arrived;
and she pushed the mother and children towards the
door.

"We are very short," stammered Maheude;
"if we only had a five-franc piece----"

The phrase was stifled, for the Maheus were proud
and never begged. Cécile looked uneasily
at her father; but the latter refused decisively,
with an air of duty.

"No, it is not our custom. We cannot do
it."

Then the young girl, moved by the mother's
overwhelmed face, wished to do all she could for
the children. They were still looking fixedly at
the brioche; she cut it in two and gave it to
them.

"Here! this is for you."

Then, taking the pieces back, she asked for an old
newspaper:

"Wait, you must share with your brothers and
sisters." And beneath the tender gaze of her
parents she finally pushed them out of the room.
The poor starving urchins went off, holding the
brioche respectfully in their benumbed little
hands.

Maheude dragged her children along the road,
seeing neither the desert fields, nor the black
mud, nor the great livid sky. As she passed
through Montsou she resolutely entered Maigrat's
shop, and begged so persistently that at last she
carried away two loaves, coffee, butter, and even
her five-franc piece, for the man also lent money
by the week. It was not her that he wanted, it
was Catherine; she understood that when he advised
her to send her daughter for provisions. They
would see about that. Catherine would box his
ears if he came too close under her nose.